it's also being televised on c-span. it's a multidimensional with lots of participants that it's important of course, everyone turn off their cell phones and pagers and all that sort of stuff, that might interfere with the sound system that is working quite well tonight. as you know, many of these events are done on a non-attributiattribution basis. well, this is not such an event. this is being done on and on the record basis. and with ambassador holbrooke. and i'm going to say a few words about him and then also point out an interesting feature on this event. . . i first encountered him when i was a somewhat younger person and he was the youngest

assistant secretary of state' fr asian affairs, and he went on. he was a key architect of the talks that helped end the fighting in bosnia, which was a major contribution of stability in that area. he was the loss to the month to i think the last diplomat to see milosevic before the -- in a valiant but ultimately unsuccessful effort to persuade him to cede to nato's demands before the kosovo air war which i covered as a "new york times" correspondent. he's been a columnist for the "washington post" and all sorts of things and now he's taken on really what is probably maybe the most challenging assignment since maybe his young days as a foreign service officer in

vietnam. but the afpac assignment. he's not a special envoy. he's a special representative with an interagency team grappling with the issues of afghanistan and pakistan with the understanding that they're interrelated. and in an interesting feature of this evening's event is he's brought a good portion of this team here. and i think they're seated in the front row. i don't know if -- i don't know if it's all of them. but he's got some of them.9$a >> almost the whole side there. [laughter] >> and so basically if i understand if he gets any really difficult questions he doesn't feel he can answer, he's going to have one of his aids stand up and take the heat. since the policy is --

afghanistan policy has been rolled out by president obama and a retinue of aids, there's been an enormous emphasis understandably on the military side of the equation which i've often generally focused on. how many forces are to be sent, what their role is. and less so on the civilian side and how that and get to that tonight. if you really go back a couple of years, three years, six, we had a debate in this city about would the iraq surge work and could we send forces there and could we turn things around? and i think it's generally conceded the iraq surge had an effect in reducing the violence there and political progress and at least on the surface there are a lot of similarities between the iraq surge and the

afghan surge, the number of troops is more or less the same. the goal is to partner with indigenous forces and help them take on the fight. we talk in both the iraq surge and the afghan surge about creating political space in time for the government to stand up. we have some of the same commanders. and somewhat ironically the name of the bush administration's iraq surge, the new way forward was somehow endorsed by the obama administration, the afghanistan surge a new way forward. there's enormous differences. afghanistan you have a rural insurgency. you don't have a central government. you have the pakistan issue. it's a very poor country. and i think that makes the afghan situation a really much more complicated and problematic. so really to open up the

discussion, i would like to ask ambassador holbrooke, you know, we know we're in the -- the president said we're in this fight because of al-qaeda. and in order to take on al-qaeda, it's important to stabilize afghanistan and in order to stabilize afghanistan, we're sending 30,000 troops. how does the effort you're coordinating, the civilian side of the equation contribute to this and how is it supposed to work in concert with the military effort? >> michael, thank you, first of all for hosting this and thank so many old friends in the room for coming today. you all know that afghanistan is entering its ninth year of the war. and the question that asked most often particularly by people i just run into is why are we in afghanistan? i think most of you know the answer. but to back into michael's question, i just need to state clearly at the outset that we're in afghanistan.

for the simple reason that it was from afghanistan that we were attacked on september 11, 2001. it is obviously true that the people who did the attack were driven east into pakistan. and that's why we now talk about afghanistan and pakistan as an interrelated situation. and i will state right up front that success in one country requires success in both. we will not be able to succeed in afghanistan unless our pakistan policies are equally successful. while the troops are in afghanistan, the hardcore of our core enemy is next door. so why are we in afghanistan? we have examined in the last 11 months and in the course of this intense policy review -- and i would just note parenthetically of all the policy issues that i've ever been involved in discussing, going way back to

the formulation of our vietnam policy when i was a very junior officer in the foreign service and i worked for some of the people i can see out there in the room and worked with others, this has been the most thorough, the most detailed, the most careful and methodical policy review i've ever participated in. president obama himself chaired numerous meetings. when we had meetings with the president we had meetings with the principals and the deputies and we'll have one tomorrow to continue on focusing on how we implement and much of what we're talking about today we'll be talking about again tomorrow down the street here. the consensus of this discussion over and over again was that you could not at this point separate the taliban from al-qaeda. i need to underscore that. if the taliban were just another awful odious social movement with terrible values, with

certain points of view we don't agree with, it would be a serious problem. but it would not justify the commitment of what will ultimately be 100,000 american troops at this build-up is completed and a good number of our allied troops numbering in the 35 to 45,000 range at least. including build-up in commitments still to come. but the separation of the taliban from al-qaeda is not currently on the horizon. the leaders of the taliban and the al-qaeda are deeply emeshed and like other groups like the hakani network which is important in the story. it is our judgment that if the taliban succeed in afghanistan, they will bring back with them to afghanistan al-qaeda. al-qaeda will then have a larger

terrain from which to operate and they will have the enormous international psychological political victory imaginable to inspire the more kinds of people who threaten our homeland. that is the core rationale and from that was derived the core goal, to destroy al-qaeda. to defeat al-qaeda. that's going to take what he. -- a while. and everybody in this room and everybody in the united states needs to recognize that while our troop equipment is not open-ended, our -- we have not -- we're not going to abandon afghanistan as happened in 1989 and started to happen in 2004/2005 with disastrous results. this is a critical component of what the president announced at west point on december 1st. now, as michael suggested, i don't want to dwell too much on the strategic and political issues, although, i'm happy to answer your questions on it because because my mandate was clearly the civilian side of the war.

when president obama and secretary clinton announced my job shortly after inauguration formally, it was stated general petraeus and i would be counterparts and work together. now, there's a problem there. he has more airplanes than i have telephones. [laughter] >> but we worked very closely together. david petraeus is a good friend of mine and i have the most enormous respect for him. and at the field level in kabul, we have the relationship and parallelism between our ambassador karl iken better. and stan mcchrystal is dual-hatted. he's the american commander reporting to general petraeus. he's also the nato isaf commander reporting through the chain of command up through the nato headquarters in brussels. so it's a little more complicated in kabul but the relationships there are very close. >> well, let me ask a question

at this point. you gave an explanation of the reason as you see for the reason for involvement in afghanistan a, but now in terms of how we execute this a number of important questions arise. and a big one -- and it does speak to your portfolio, is the issue of a sanctuary in pakistan. and certainly in the case of iraq, we had iran providing lethal assistance to shiite militias. we had the syrians turning a blind eye to some foreign fighters crossing but we didn't have insurgent leaders headquartered across the border with significant numbers of fighters moving back and forth across more or less at will. and it seems that the pakistanis have taken on the pakistani taliban. but according to recent comments by general petraeus, they've not really stepped up to the issue of the afghan taliban. what specifically have you and

your team done to pursue this problem, to deny these sanctuaries and to get the pakistanis to take this action because without it, it's really hard to imagine the united states making the kind of progress it would need to make by july of 2011. >> i agree with your general comment at the end, michael. i would simply say that this is a matter of the highest concern to us. we have had more high level visitors traveling to pakistan than any other country in the world since january 20th. we feel that pakistan did not get the attention it required in the last eight years. and to a considerable extent the attention it got was focused in the wrong areas. we have to look at pakistan in its entirety. it's the second largest muslim country in the world. it is true as you say that in its western areas are some extremely dangerous people who openly and directly threaten the united states.

some of whom are al-qaeda recruiting people for international terrorism and some of whom crossed the border as you point out. to fight against the allied forces. at the same time, we need to broaden out our approach. in recent months secretary clinton and i went over there. general jones, a national security advisor went over there, admiral mullen is there either today or tomorrow, general petraeus was there yesterday. i look forward to going back next month. just working out the schedule now. i was with the pakistani ambassador this afternoon at some length going over this. and we -- in this effort, we want to broaden our attention towards pakistan so that we are increasing our civilian aid very substantially. there was a great imbalance between military and civilian aid but we're also increasing our military aid. when you asked your question, i was about to ask to introduce my

team so that people here would get a sense of how many issues we cover in our office. but in every case we cover issues involving pakistan. senator kerry and senator lugar and chairman berman in the house passed the so-called kerry-lugar-berman bill which is $7.5 million over five years, authorized money, for pakistan civilian aid. that was a landmark bill. somewhat misunderstood in some quarters in pakistan, but it was designed to bring large projects and energy and water. plus, education and health projects to the people of all of pakistan. energy, for example, karachi, the according's largest muslim city, 18 million people, four hours of electricity a day during the summer. this year. this was created an economic spiral. textile mills were closing

because of the lack of energy. there were demonstrations in the streets. this was creating instability. there's a lot of political problems. and meanwhile, in the west, the situation you described and we wanted to take an integrated approach to pakistan in its own merits. and my own personal view is we ought to increase the aid to pakistan. now, in regard to the sanctuaries, i believe and general petraeus, i know, also shares this view and, in fact, i think he said it today publicly to a journalist -- i believe that the pakistanis have made considerable progress this year. they took on the terrorists in swat. and they dispersed them. they move into south rastirstan and the fighting is continuing. there's been all sorts of activities to stand up to the taliban in the west. is it enough?

well, obviously we want them to do as much as they will do. but i'm not going to sit here and demand of a sovereign country what they have to do. they know what they should do in terms of their own interest and ours. we're engaged in the most intense dialog under the most complicated circumstances with pakistan. all of you who studied south asia or -- i can see in this room some of you who served there understand that the interaction between the countries of south asia creates very complicated dynamics in the history between pakistan and afghanistan since 1947. it has been exceedingly complicated. and let us not forget that the origins of what we're now dealing with go back to the 1970s and '80s. and there are direct lines from the -- all the way through. and a lot of mistakes were made, which we inherited and we're

trying to sort out. but i want to stress how absolutely central pakistan is to stability in the region by virtue of history, geography, ethnicity and destiny. and our commitment to work with the pakistanis as close friends and allies is undiminished. it's not easy. and a lot of what you read is stirred up by the media over there. they have one of the freest medias in the world. but that's the facts. now, with your permission, because you mentioned the civilians, i would love to let these people just introduce themselves. >> let me just ask a couple more questions and we'll get to the team 'cause -- >> they're getting agitated, you know. [laughter] >> good. and let me squeeze in a few questions here. [laughter] >> and then we'll introduce the team. not to worry. >> don't worry. you'll get your chance.

[laughter] >> but i just want to continue on this theme of what needs to be done to operationalize the strategy. and clearly an important concept is the desire not to have to fight all of the taliban to reintegrate and reconcile important elements of them into the afghanistan political structure. there's some of this going on, maybe not all that successfully, according to recent media reports, that the ground level in afghanistan, but in terms of your effort as a special representative and that of your team, have you been doing anything specifically in terms of reconciliation with the taliban leadership? have you been exploring this with them? reaching out to them directly or indirectly with an eye towards creating -- well, some sort of new political compact in afghanistan? >> well, this is a very

interesting issue. i think we need to be realistic and honest here. we check the mission statements of isaf when we took office. and the mission statement was to defeat the taliban in afghanistan. and the resources allocated to that was about 30,000 u.s. troops and about an equal number of non-u.s. troops. so the resource mission mismatch was spectacular. it couldn't be done. and then you have to analyze as stan mcchrystal has done, as we've done in our office, as david petraeus has done -- you have to analyze, a, could it be achieved? b, what would the resources take to do it? and c, is it achievable? in petraeus' strategic analysis in august and leaked to the

newspapers, he addressed this problem and he came up with benchmark numbers based on classic counterinsurgency doctrine, which were absolutely enormous. vietnam level numbers. at the height we had 550,000 troops in vietnam. and all of us agreed, a, that was neither necessary nor desirable. nor would it achieve its stated goal. so we needed to concentrate on what we're trying to do. and that leads us to an analysis of the taliban once again. we are not going to try to eliminate every member of the taliban, for several reasons. neither achievable, nor necessary, nor are they all devotees of mulla omar or al-qaeda. the majority of people fighting for the taliban in afghanistan,

according to all the information we can garner, are not committed followers of mulla omar or osama bin laden. they are people who fight for money. they're people who fight for -- because of grievances against the government. that's the -- that's where the corruption issue comes in. the taliban's greatest calling card when they came to power in the mid-1990s was the lack of an effective and open and fair justice system. and that's still a problem we need to deal with. and it's one of our major programs. and a couple of my colleagues here worked very aggressively on the rule of law issues. >> so have you had these kind of contacts or is it too soon or directly or indirectly. >> let me get there, michael. the taliban can be divided clearly into three groups.

the majority of them are not ideological as i was saying. then there are people who fight in organized units on a local basis and then there is the hardcore. the leadership of the hardcore is, as we already said, in pakistan. our goal is going to include reaching out to what is sometimes called the reconcilable elements. that is the reintegration program. now, one of the main reasons we were not able to do that effectively since january 20th is the kind of 800-pound monster that sat over our heads from january 20th until november 19th. from the day we took office until the day hamid karzai was elected. the elections hung over everything else we did. and in some areas they had very little effect like agriculture and counternarcotics and several

specific -- and many specific programs that weren't controversial. but in certain areas, including this one, including rule of law, including anticorruption, they were so integrated with the political system that we couldn't get them going. in karzai's inaugural speech he said very clearly that he was going to revitalize this program. we have been talking to our allies about it. we've talked to him. general mcchrystal and ambassador eikenberry both have people working on this. we have people working on it here in this room and back at the state department. what are we going to do? we're going to work out a revitalization of very ineffective of past programs that offered an opportunity to people fighting with the taliban. there was an extremely good article in the "washington post" yesterday, front page on this, which outlined how the programmed failed. people who had heard there was -- they didn't want to fight

with the taliban. they came in and they got no kind of benefits. that's a major issue for us. and so in regard to this issue, which i consider one of the most important around, you're going to see a significant change in policy in conjunction with the afghan government in the coming weeks. >> i want to ask you -- you mentioned president karzai. i wanted to ask you a question on that and then we're going to get to your team. before the election of president karzai, it was no secret that many members of the obama administration, either as legislators or as vice presidents, were very critical of president karzai. it was reported that vice president biden walked out on him, maybe on more than one occasion. as a columnist in the "washington post," you certainly in one of your columns that i read were critical of karzai for

not taking action in, i think, regard after some abuse. you've had your own difficult meetings with him. now he's the accepted leader of afghanistan. i think it occurs to me many of these were, the discussion, that he was going to be the prevailing leader of afghanistan. what is it working in the government of afghanistan in this context -- is it possible to despite this difficult history work successfully with president karzai? and is it possible to work with other levels and strata of the afghan government to perhaps bypass some of these problems? and how can you do it if karzai appoints all the ministers and governors. >> i see no problem working with president karzai. he was elected. it was as president obama said, it was a messy election. we knew it would be. i said repeatedly before the election it wouldn't be perfect. hillary clinton said very much

more eloquently than i can that to ask a country to hold an election in these circumstances under war, that the taliban saying that they would cut off the finger of anyone who had the purple ink on it, which meant they voted, it was a daunting task. no country at such a low level of education, infrastructure war for 30 years had attempted anything like this. so it was difficult. but at the end of it, there's an undisputed president and karzai. it was always clear he would be the heavy favorite. no one doubted that. our effort was to make the process as honest as possible. we did not have a candidate. some people interpreted that as supporting karzai. and some people interpreted that as opposing karzai. neither fact was true. we were supporting an open process.

and it came out as it came out. and on november 19th, secretary clinton and i sat in the audience as he gave his inaugural address, which we thought was a good address. he addressed every issue you've raised so far. president zardari was you there and he sat in the front row and that was a nice symbolism given the relationship between those two countries. now you where do we go from there? the answer to the second part of your question. we have absolutely no problem working with his government. is it as good as it could be? is it as good as we'd like it to be? well, he himself says he'd like to improve it. he had a long section on corruption in his inaugural. president obama looked for actions backing up the words. karl eikenberry and i spoke this

morning about corruption, about the next series of elections. you mentioned the question of ministers and governors. in any government you don't just work with the president, with the chief of state. you work with the ministers. there's some very good ministers in the government. the government is about to change so i don't know which ministers are going to stay and which are going to leave. but we have had excellent relationships with many key ministers, most -- i'll just take one obvious example, the minister of agriculture. the minister of agriculture is a terrific minister. my colleague otto gonzalez from usda and beth -- there's beth from a.i.d. go out there regularly. we have a major agricultural program which is our major security program because it's an agricultural country and we are -- we're working directly with the minister and with the department of agriculture people in every -- the minister of

agricultural people in every single province. we had 10 americans working in agriculture. we have over 100 now and building from a.i.d. and the department of agriculture. and that does not count at least 5 agriculture development teams from the national guard from states like texas and i think nebraska has one. what are the others? kentucky, indiana, texas, nebraska. there's a fifth -- and california. thank you. so these are terrific guys. so we have 200 people working in agriculture. agriculture -- we were spending less money on agriculture than we were on poppy crop eradication. in the last few years. we ended eradicating poppy crops. we were just driving farmers into the hands of the taliban. and we're building agriculture. otto and beth are headed back out there at the beginning of

january to work on building up an agricultural credit bank. this was a great agricultural country. it exported raisins and pomegranates and saffron and pistachio nuts and wine from the plain and that all ended in '78 and we were ignoring agriculture. and if you get an agricultural economy revitalized you're going to start to withdraw the incentive, the attractiveness of the taliban to some of these unemployed youths. so we're going to revitalize agriculture. the congress has backed us fully on this. and in this effort, we're not working directly with president karzai, michael. he support it is. we're working with the ministries, we're working with the province governors legislator good at this. i start with agriculture because it is our top nonsecurity priority. and the only priority which is higher is training the police.

and the army, something i know you'll want to talk about. so, yeah, we work with the president. we work with his ministers. we work with the better governors. when you encounter a ministry that you can't work with, if you encounter a ministry that you think is corrupt or incompetent, you have to adjust accordingly. that's just the realities of the nature of the job. and we do that. and this is a whole of government effort in both afghanistan and here in washington. >> i think at this point following on that, i think it is a good time to introduce your team. i'd like to move to the second part of this program where the members and participants and press and all that get to ask questions. . ou introduce your m first. >> what i would like to do is ask each one of them -- they have been waiting weeks for their moment. i would like each one of them to stand up and announce which agency they come from end what

they do very quickly. we do not have one agency here. they are located in langley, and i cannot remember their name, but they could not join us. there are 10 agencies, certainly the largest ever assembled in the state department, and in my career, this is the best team i have ever worked with, so in no particular order, it is almost the entire right side of the room. >> [unintelligible] our work on the issue of communications. >> i work on finance issues by

creating an environment non conducive. >> it is nothing short of central. there was one person at the beginning of this year working on financing. there was a theory that all the >> there was a theory that all the money came from drugs. that terri was not true. and when we asked the intelligence community, they came back and said no, the largest source is also extortion. rommey came over to our office and with the support of stoolie and david colin, undersecretary, and tim geithner, they are now something like 25 people. 25 people in treasury alone who also are working with people like will at the pentagon. this is a very big effort. and rommey and i've will be going to the gold in genoa to work on this again. >> good evening.

i am senior adviser to ambassador holbrook on pakistan issues and i came from the school of council on foreign relations. >> hi. beginning. i am the senior advisor for agriculture from the u.s. department of agriculture. we are focusing on working with usaid and the u.s. military on improving out of cultural jobs and incomes, and improving afghan competence in their government. particularly the agriculture. >> i am dan. i am one of two deputies to ambassador holbrook. i help to coordinate a small team of focusing just on international engagement. and diplomatic initiatives. in part to help make it more efficient or i help to oversee a range of legal detainee human rights and other issues. spirit and the back story on that is when president obama and secretary clinton appointed me, other countries begin to follow

suit. and we now have 28 different countries. the last one was the belgium last week. some of these are very important, but we welcome them all, whether they are big or small. we will meet again in the united arab emirates in early january. and this is the central mechanism through which we are coordinating international efforts, and this is a work in progress, but dan and his team, a lot of them who are not here today, are working with an international secretary to coordinate the international effort. on assistance and goat to diplomatic issues that we have not addressed yet. >> good eating. my name is beth with u.s. agency for international development. i work on development and system issues in afghanistan and pakistan. >> good eating. my name is read a. i am senior adviser on afghanistan and my primary area

of focus is political development in afghanistan. >> hello. my name is jillian and i am from the state department and i work on deploying the civilians that are going to the increase in afghanistan. >> now that increase is remarkable. we have 300 american civilians in afghanistan in january. they were on six-month tours. lengthy vacations. 300. we have more than tripled in by the end of this month. and we will keep going next year, working -- joanne has special authority from the president to short-circuit the hiring process so it's a little buzz on race, although frankly, i still think it is pretty onerous. but it is better. jack lew, are deputy secretary and i work and on and on this and jack ought to be on the stage with me on this subject. triple the number of civilians with no more six-month tours.

one year tours. anyone whose spouses want to take a job, can go out as a tandem couple, although school-age children are obviously a big problem. this is the largest, fastest buildup we've ever had. and the interesting thing to me was when we eliminate the six-month tours, recruitment went out. this is both a.i.d. and state, and also include some of the detail these from places like agriculture. >> i am ashley, i do his trips to the region and i also work on communication issues, as well as our new mobile products that we are introducing with the mobile banking, mobile payment to the police, telemedicine and our estimates programs in afghanistan and pakistan. >> and this is -- we found that telecommunications technology is

a quite simple one. has a tremendous diet in cutting down corruption. if we get police to get paid through hell of mobile facilities, the newly discovered they were getting paid 30% more than their paychecks. you can imagine what the other 30% was going. desertions dropped. so this is a central issue. "the new york times" and its innovative section of a magazine, this lastly, 100 good ideas of the year, listed this as one of them. it's one of the great innovations we've done, and petraeus and mcchrystal picked up on it. >> good evening. my name is derek hogan. i focus on governance and coordination, particularly in the area of governance. >> i think we should just move, let them finish.

>> go ahead. >> and i will let you finish so the audience can ask some questions. spirit i intend from the department of homeland security. working on border management and customs issues. >> good evening. i am the chief of staff. i do what ever needs to be done. [laughter] >> crisp, detailed from the fbi. police adviser. >> my name is matt. i'm a detail from the department of justice working on rule of law, corruption and other related issues. >> three more. >> i am lieutenant colonel bryan lanson from the office of the chairman joint chiefs of staff. i work security issues. >> i am maribeth. i am in the state department it coming economic and energy issues.

>> paul jones, deputy to ambassador holbrook. we were just visiting with 51 civilians going out you were training right now in indiana with our military colleagues. >> okay. i think that was well worth doing and where not the point that you have been waiting for, where we're going to try to squeeze in a few questions. and please wait for the microphone, identify yourself and state your affiliation. and let's see if we can keep the questions concise and will try to squeeze in as many as we can. right there. >> good to see you again. we saw each other in kabul during the election. >> thank you for the work on that mission. >> thank you. >> you did a great job with that election. >> i was in iran.

going village to village in my previous work and i spotted many of the same things i see in pakistan. i go to pakistan frequently. go out to the villages. and there's a tremendous disconnect between the top level in pakistan, upper level society and the people in the villages. i hope also that they get a network and delivery network to get a.i.d. out to the rural areas where there is only 40%, in pakistan only 40 percent of the children of school age are in school. thousands of children die every week because of minor helpings that they could have, if they get a vaccination. the hearts and minds of the rural people i hope will be with a.i.d. thank you.

>> i ask you this question a couple years ago. we all know deep down there is no solution and southeast problem that is controlled by indian government. are you serious to apply that to resolve this issue? i asked this question before and he told me my question, somehow we solve the issue, unable to resolve our problem. god willing, we would keep fighting for next 60s years. and my next question -- >> only one question. >> let me be very clear. i am not working on that problem. [laughter] >> i think he answered that.

>> rick? >> i don't even mention the problem on not working on. it's a game, when i go to india and i go to india frequently and i look forward to going back soon, because we keep the indians very closely informed of our efforts, because indians are hugely important factor here. but whenever that second question comes up, your indian journalistic colleagues try to get me to mention that k. word. and i will not do it. because everybody keeps saying that either i am certainly working on it, or i out to be working on it. well, they are wrong on both counts. i am not working on that problem. the president addressed it very clearly as did the secretary of state in recent interviews. and my job is to work on the civilian side of afghanistan, pakistan. we all know how important that issue is. everyone knows it, and it is long tortured history.

but it is not what i do, and it is not what the countries in the region expect me to do. and i think -- i understand where you ask it, but that's the simple fact. >> rick? >> you made some very eloquent comments at the beginning about how important pakistan is, and you mentioned the caring and so forth bills, seven-point 5,000,000,008 to pakistan. but we have got to be spinning in that same five year period at least 10 times if not 20 times that amount in afghanistan. don't we have it backwards? you've implied that pakistan is even more difficult if you just heard, 40 percent of the kids in pakistan are in school and the rest are not. benita there are enormous. is our focus in the right place? >> i don't think that we're short shrift in afghanistan at all. but i do accept totally the premise of your question. i wrote it before i came to the governor. i been fighting for this since

the day i came in. i can assure you that president obama and secretary clinton share that view. we went up with an enormous increase on civilian assistance for pakistan. we pledged $1 billion at the tokyo pledging conference in april. when the refugee crisis and we had two and a half million refugees that appear out of nowhere, hillary clinton was out there four days later with the first $110 million. normally, the united states puts 20, 25 percent of the international assistance on refugee issues. in this case, we put up almost 50%. we are out there all the time. but as i said in my opening remarks, and i was preemptively addressing your question, but i will address it now, we don't give enough aid to pakistan in my view. but it is extremely difficult,

because of the long complicated history between the two countries. one of the best, the best book, this is dennis cook's book, u.s. pakistan relations since 1946, if you read the whole panoply of the relationship, you see how many ups and downs we've had, how many times there was some kind of misunderstanding. so speaking for myself, but i know with the general sentiment of my colleagues, we should give -- we should give more money to pakistan, but it should be an international effort. this is not a truman doctrine, marshall plan days again where it all comes from us. the european union is a tiny fraction of assistance. and finally, at tokyo they gave $100 billion which was a big step forward. and i was in brussels last week talking to the new, sort of the new foreign minister of europe

about this. and i think she's going to be very good. i think carla hills, you know her. i never met her before. i was a tremendously impressed with the opportunities. but the answer to your question is, absolutely. it's a little bit out of kilter. but that doesn't mean cut afghanistan. that means increased pakistan, and it means get the international community, which is being pretty generous in afghanistan. look at japan, $5 billion over the next five years. a 400% increase announced last month that we have to get the same thing in pakistan. and that will require national understanding here in the united states, led by a bipartisan congressional effort to and for me, that is one of the three or four highest priorities, is to get our pakistan assistance international to that level. >> let's go over there, and then we will go to the back of the room.

>> alan grayson, ambassador holbrooke, could you discuss the benchmarks that you have in mind for the success of your programs? and also how you assess the chances of success in? >> allen, the congress asked for and the president asked for a series of metrics of the benchmarks to measure a progress. those worked laboriously hammered out in the interagency process which was directed by the national security council with input from some of my team. quite honestly, they are pretty technical. and for me to go into them now would be diversionary. all of you can imagine what they are. and so i will just leave it at that. they are publicly available, and they've been shared with the congress, congresswoman is very

end of helpless hammer through the. she has been very active in focus in that area. >> over there. >> i am from the "washington post." i would like to raise an issue that is sort of hard to quantify, but it's very powerful. i appreciate everything you have said, and i have no doubts about either the goodwill or the expertise of all the efforts that are going into pakistan today. but as someone who has lived there for much of the past number of years, i don't discount something else. which is an extraordinary sense of what i sadly call defined self destructiveness.

of afghans. i can't quantify this, but i think that there are a lot of afghans who hate us more than they hate the taliban. and serving more than they hate al qaeda. so my question is then with this surge that is coming, both military and civilian, in which many, many good intentioned, highly qualified people will go into this country, some of them will die. what are you, all of you, doing to try to counter the extraordinarily persistent notion among afghans that we are the enemy? it's not for nothing that

afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires. and i think you understand that much better than i do. thank you. >> thank you. i don't know if i understand it better than you do, because there is no reporter in the field, but that i admire more and i am astonished to see you here. i give -- every time i go to kabul i ask is you and you are always in some remote area. but you remember, we are in our agricultural meeting in kabul when we discuss these issues. and i'm glad to see you here. first of all, you talked about, this is is an interesting phrase, i never heard it before. i've even seen it in the united states, pam. [laughter] >> the venue alluded to the fact that some afghans hate us more than they hate the taliban, but you know as well as anyone that

that is not universally true that every single public opinion poll, and there are polls in afghanistan and afghanistan is a poor country with a high literacy rate. but very sophisticated politically. they have lived in politics for centuries without quite realizing that's what they lived. they don't like the taliban. they know what the black years were about and they don't want to return to it. at the same time, what next afghans together, is their sense of being afghans whether they are pashtun, or turkmen. there's never been a separatist movement in afghanistan, whereas its neighbors, pakistan, iran, and if you will, the soviet union and till it fell apart, all had separatist movements. what bound them together was the historical narrative that they drove out the others, the graveyard and buyers. and i greatly respect that.

otherwise, this country wouldn't exist. on the other hand, it is geography. is poverty. it is rolling history has been as we all know an extraordinary and dramatic one. but very few people support the taliban traditionally. now, what about us? i will say frankly that the united states failed to explain to the afghan people what they were doing there. when they went in, and particularly after the little golden period after the taliban left, whatever things seemed possible and ngo supported and there was such an excitement. and a group of three cups of tea drama unfolded, and that book, is a perfect microcosm of a. but as things turned the other way and civilian casualties he came a dominant issue and the u.s. made no adequate explanation of why we were

there, things began to turn in an unpleasant way. two of the people who were just introduced themselves, actually and vikram, have been focused with me and with undersecretary judith mchale on this issue. and david goodrich and mike mullen and stanley mcchrystal and i have been focused on. we have changed the articulation of our present very substantially, in both countries, but particularly in afghanistan because we have to explain it better. i hear you loud and clear. every one of my colleagues and i worry about this every day. and that's why -- that's why we stopped destroying poppies, pam. you know that. you have come to the. i could not understand why we were spending more money destroying poppy crops than we were building of agriculture, driving farmers into the hands of the taliban. and instead, with the general

mcchrystal's strong support, we ended that program. we are building up the agriculture, and we will issue a paper on this in the next day or two. and at the same time, we put heavy emphasis and interjection in destroying the drug czar's. some of you may have seen on television during the fighting season these mammoth explosion of drug paraphernalia, opium, we have done tremendous damage to there. we know from information we received through various sources that by removing that it can, we removed a recruiting tool. and now we have to go to work on other issues, like encouraging the government to do with corruption which is another folder building. this is tough work there it is the toughest job i've ever had. and you put your finger on the underlying dynamic. but let us not that while we were in this country. it is in our own national

interest because of al qaeda, but to succeed, we have to address these issues. and that's what this team and people who are not here today, and people out in the field are trying to do. >> in the very far quarter, way back there. >> good evening. i think most of the people in afghanistan believe that the conflict that's in afghanistan and pakistan, based on that most like a big part of afghanistan became a part of pakistan. you have any plan to work on that issue or do you have any concern about that? >> are you talking about the line? >> yes. >> you know, there is a former ambassador who may be here today, ron newman. is wrong here? ron has suggested we work with the dirham minded i kind of look into it, because one of the big problems is that we are talking

about cross-border operations in an area where the border isn't agreed on. but it is my reluctant conclusion, we really cannot achieve much in that area right now. most of the international boundaries in this incredible area of the world, the two largest countries, china and india, plus pakistan plus afghanistan plus some of the former soviet republicans, are not agreed on. india and china have a constant problem. pakistan and india have their famous problems. and we have the durham line. and it is a very, very serious issue. but it is not one i think we can fix in the middle of a war. so i hear you. i understand the importance of it, but we're not going to put that on the front burner right now. >> i'm going to ask a last question. it's not my question. it's a question sent in by a

national member who have been participating through video means. and it is from jonathan paris, south asia center of the atlantic council, london in the. and it is about pakistan, about the effect of our policy in pakistan. given that the obama administration several times during the last two months has said pakistan is a party that are you concerned that the mayor can pressure around the pakistani army to go after the afghan taliban inside baluchistan will ultimately undermine the cohesion of the pakistani army with and contribute to the destabilization of pakistan? is that sort of concern? >> i don't think any american official ever said quote pakistan is the prize, uncle. but what we did say and i will repeat again today, is that you can't separate the interconnectedness of the two countries. and the previous question illustrate why.

the borders are not agreed on. and there are postern intermarried kinship patterns, family ties across them the disputed border. are we concerned about these issues? you bet. pakistani officials have said publicly prior to the president's decision and since the president's decision has sent 30000 additional troops, they said very clear he very honestly, you know, and 2002, you drove the taliban and al qaeda into pakistan without consulting us or preparing us, and we inherited the consequences. and we need to be consulted. and stand the crystal, with our strong encouragement, and ambassador eikenberry similarly encouraged go to islamabad pretty readily with no publicity in order to talk to the government and the military about these operations. so that this time around, we are very much more conscious of the

fact that if we have an operation opposite baluchistan, the more successful it is, the more it might put pressure on our ally in pakistan. and we have to coordinate it. and while it is far from perfect, it is a very complicated. there so many moving parts. we haven't really moved the ball forward here in terms of close coordination. and i've talked to the generals about this. i think they are very pleased with the constant flow of information between us and them. and as i said earlier, the chairman of the joint chiefs and commander of centcom have both been to islamabad, yesterday and today, tomorrow. we are in constant indications. that doesn't make it perfect. this is a very important question. but we are fully conscious of it and we are working on it

continually, in close collaboration with our pakistani friends and allies. >> i would like to thank ambassador holbrooke and with all the members of the team that came here tonight. for an interesting discussion. [applause] >> the senate is about to begin the 15th of debate on health care. two votes possible today. and a minute by bernie sanders to expand medicare to everyone. the other a republican motion to stop thieves and taxes and the bill from going into effect until health care benefits kick in. live senate coverage now on c-span2. confidence in your final victory over the hearts of humanity. may our lawmakers face these sometimes baffling days with the glad assurance that no weapon that

has been formed can prevail against your eternal purposes. lord, help them to relinquish any negative thoughts to you and receive a fresh infusion of your hope. burn away the barriers to unity so that your will can be done on earth, even as it is done in heaven. we pray in your soverign name. amen. the presiding officer: please join me in reciting the pledge of allegiance to the flag. i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands,

one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. the presiding officer: the clerk will read a communication to the senate. the clerk: washington d.c., december 16, 2009. to the senate: under the provisions of rule 1, paragraph 3, of the standing rules of the senate, i hereby appoint the honorable tom udall, a senator from the state of new mexico, to perform the duties of the chair. signed: robert c. byrd, presidet pro tempore. mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: i note the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call:

mr. reid: mr. president? the presiding officer: the majority leader is recognized. mr. reid: i ask consent the call of the quorum be vitiated. the presiding officer: without objection, so ordered. roeupl following leader remarks the senate will resume consideration of health care reform legislation. the first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees. the -- we expect to vote in relation to the hutchison amendment today and the sanders amendment. it is my understanding senator sanders will offer his amendment around 11:00 today. they will both be pending. senators will be notified as to when any votes are scheduled. mr. president, we continue 0 making progress toward making it possible for every american to afford to be able to live a healthy life. senators continue to work together towards a goal because even though they may have differing opinions on the details we share the strong belief in the differences we can make on the american people as it relates to their being healthy. we all know our current system

is beyond broken and we know the citizens of this country demand that we fix it. we know this because they tell us in letters, in phone calls, in visits we have at home, which we haven't been going home very much. but certainly when we are able to get there. those who oppose making health care more affordable and making health insurance companies more accountable are likely to believe that is not the case. but that is only propaganda by the insurance industry. they want you to think that the american people are happy with these greedy insurance companies deny health care to the sick and take away their coverage at the exact moment they need it the most. they like you to believe that the american people don't mind hearing a multibillion-dollar company tell them "i'm sorry, i'm sorry you have diabetes. i'm sorry you have a heart condition. but it also hurts my bottom line, so you're on your own."

these insurance companies and health care deliverers want you to believe that women gladly pay more than they should for the screenings they have to catch breast cancer, that men gladly pay more than they should to have the test to capture prostate cancer and that senators gladly pay much, much more than they should to get their prescription drugs and certainly seniors do that. i would like the record to reflect that when i said senators, i meant seniors. mr. president, those who are trying to slow the senate and really the country stop reform want you to believe the american people don't mind paying hidden taxes to cover the uninsured. they don't mind the waste and fraud rampant in the health care system and don't mind losing their health insurance if they lose their job. that's not true. that's not the case. and the people we represent, whether it's new mexico, montana, we have two from new mexico, one from michigan, one

from kentucky, oklahoma. it doesn't matter what state you represent, mr. president, there are stories. let's go with mike tracy who lives in northwest las vegas, nevada said. his 26-year-old son has been an insolent-dependent diabetic since he was a baby -- an insulin dependent diabetic since he was a baby. but this family's troubles are about more than just money. since they couldn't afford to treat their son's diabetes, it developed into something called addison's disease, the disease president kennedy had. if you have money you can treat the disease. if you don't, it's a very bad disease, likely could be fatal. this is what mike wrote me this past friday -- and i quote -- "i don't know what to pray for first: that i will die before my son so i don't have to bear the burden or that i outlive him so that i can provide support for his family when he's gone."

end of quote. this shouldn't be a choice for any american. and when given the chance to help people like mike, our choice should be easy. here's another example. helen o'rourke wrote to me last tuesday about her friends who live in nevada, a town on the shores of lake tahoe. the family's two-year-old daughter has cancer of the eye that could cost her vision or her life. her parents don't have health insurance and are counting on friends to help pay for their doubter's mounting, mounting medical bills. they are also counting on us to hroert cost of health care so they can -- lower the cost of health care so they can afford their own. they work hard and want health insurance but can't get it. another letter i got was from elizabeth parsons. she teaches music and volunteers after school at a dance and drama theater in town. she is 60 years old and wants to retire at the end of the school year. but, as she wrote me last

thursday, "unfortunately that plan has been postponed indefinitely for one reason: i can't afford to retire because of the skyrocketing increases in my health insurance." ms. parsons has done a lot for her community. and now her country's leaders should do something for her. we should be sure that her retirement doesn't hinge on how much money it is for her. a man named walt wrote me to tell me about his wife, she had a heart attack three decembers ago and health insurance companies are using that as an excuse to charge $2,000 a month for coverage, $25,000 a year. they call it a preexisting condition, a prior heart attack. she's not old enough for medicare, but walt is, he's 68. he had to go back to work so she could be put on his group health

insurance. now walt is asking us to make sure that no one's health history can make staying healthy in the future more expensive. ken hanson is from muskett, he has chronic heart problems an parts of his feet have been amputated. he can't go to the doctor because he makes too much for medicaid and too little to afford private insurance. he wrote me -- quote --"i'm very frustrated because it seems that my only hope is that i die very soon because i can't afford to stay alive." these are his words. not my words. that his only hope is that he die. how can we look the other way? how can we possibly do nothing? this isn't about balance sheets or graphs or charts, contracts or fineprint, politics or partisanship. this is about life and death in america. each story is more heartbreaking

than the last. each of these nevadans has more than enough on his or her mind, and, yet, each of these citizens took time out of their day to beg their leaders to do something. mike tracy ended his letter to me a few days ago, here's what he said, democrats need health care, republicans need health care, independents need health care, all americans need health care. get it done. close quote. we can't let them down. we just can't let them down. those trying to kill this reform have made it clear that they'll do anything to stop us. they can recite and recycle talking points to their heart's content. but that's it. as long as mike tracy's son might die from a heart disease that we can treat, we must not let these obstacles stand in the way. as long as they have to borrow

to money -- money to take their daughter to the doctor, as long at walt say that's he can't afford to retire and ken hanson says that he can't afford to stay alive. we can't stop fighting for them. on a final point, mr. president, for some time now, we democrats, have been trying to reform estate tax to avoid the train wreck coming next month because of the legislation passed by the republicans in 2001, estate tax is repealed in 2010. gone. nothing. but because of this emic they used to -- gimmick they used to pass this legislation, the estate tax returns in 2011, and it does so at levels that we're in in effect in 2001. this has created a nightmare for families trying to plan their afairms we proposed a -- affairs. we proposed a responsible response to estate tax, we plan

to extend the current law so that in 2010 couples would be able to pass down up to million, completely tax free. an estate tax that the level exempts all but the wealthiest, .1% of 1% estates from paying any estate tax. the other side has rejected this reasonable approach. instead they want to keep the bush tax law in place for 2010 as originally designed. the irony and the republicans' position is that it hurts their very families, small businessmen, women, and family farmers who they claim they're trying to help. the family-owned businesses in 2010 is that repeal of the estate tax will actually increase tax liabilities. these are families would never pay the estate tax because they don't have assets

holding $10 million for a couple. so why do they face a tax increase? it that's to do with the provision in the tax code called, stepped-up basis. what does this mean? the assets of family owned businesses are often in the form of unrealized capital gains. right now until the end of this year, december 31st, these capital gains are forgiven when a person dies. no capital gains at death. and for these families who have less than $7 million there is no estate tax under current law. therefore, for these families death is not a taxable event. the capital gains tax is forgiven because the heirs to the property have a stepup in basis when they ultimately sell the property. the law that my republican colleagues insist go into place next month repeal the stepped up basis. if -- if you're not celebrate, you should be really afraid. if you're wealthy you get a huge

windfall from are the repeal of the estate tax. if you're modestly successful, say you have a shoe store, a service station, a small farm or whatever small business, but not to the point where you face an estate tax liability, your heirs will nonetheless face a tax increase because of the repeal of the estate tax. for the wealthiest families in this country, don't worry about that. estate tax is gone. for many, many small businesses, republicans say, well, that's too bad. all these years the republicans were using family farms and small businesses as props for their zeal to repeal the estate tax. the real goal was protecting the wealthiest of the wealthy. the unfortunate aspect of that campaign is that repeal of the estate tax for one year will come at the expense of family owned farms an small businesses. we asked last night, continue will be asked again by the chairman of the finance

committee, the senior senator from montana, senator baucus, that we extend the estate tax that's now exist giving a couple of -- an exemption up t to $7 million for two months while we work out things on that and other issues, but that has been rejected by my friends from the -- from the other side of the aisle. if the estate tax it will be a boon for the treasury. we know that tens of thousands of middle-class families could suffer. if the estate taxes lapses for even a short period, these families would be subject to capital gains when they sell their inherited property, a process that will be enormously complicated to families that have no estate tax or planning issues today. all of this could be retroactively eliminated and it would affect large numbers of families who ordinarily don't have to think about the estate tax.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader's recognized. mr. mcconnell: i would ask my colleague, the majority leader, was it intention to propound a u.c., unanimous consent request on issue? mr. reid: i say to my friend, the chairman of the finance committee will do that. mr. mcconnell: all right. mr. president, i'll go ahead and make my opening remarks and i don't know when the chairman of the finance committee wanted to make this -- did he want to make a speech in connection with it as well? a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i say to my friend from kentucky, not likely a speech, but i'm more than prepared to wait until you give your comments and at the conclusion of your comments, i'll make the request. mr. mcconnell: i would say to my friend from montana, it would be helpful to do the consent agreement if he wanted to speak to the issue later. mr. baucus: other senators would like to speak too. the senator from new mexico would like to speak too. mr. mcconnell: mr. president,

reclaiming my leader time. the longer over debate on health care goes on, the clearer the problem becomes is that the problem that the democrats are having is not with some of the provisions that we're hearing on the news. the problem is the fundamental opposition from the american people of the core components of the bill, the core of the bill. americans oppose the democratic plan because they know the final product is a colossal legislative mistake. not only does this bill fail to achieve its primary goal of lowering the cost of health care, it makes matters worse by driving up premiums, raising taxes, and wrecking medicare for seniors. the bill is fundamentally tblawd. flawed. and the american people know it can't be fixed. that's why they're asking us to stop and start over with the kind of common sense, step-by-step reforms that will address the cause problem. fortunately, a growing number of

democrats are beginning to listen to the voices of the american people. we had just today, mr. president, a "washington post" poll indicating, once again, the polls are unanimous that the american people are overwhelmingly opposed to this bill, and seniors, in particular, by a very wide margin do not favor this bill. so our friends on the other side of the aisle face a choice, they can either side with those who are making a call to history or they can side with their constituents who say that a vote on this bill would be a historic mistake. that's what's unfolding behind-the-scenes. there's a handful of democratic leaders press ahead in a blind rush of frantic deal making to find 60 votes by christmas, rap handful of other democrats are deciding which side they want to stand on when the dust settles. with those pushing them to support a bill they don't really like or with the american people who are imploring them not to do it.

this is an important moment in the life of our nation. this is one of those moments when the decisions of a handful of elected leaders are the only difference between america going down one road or another. history will be made either way. history will be made either way. but in this case, as in many others from our history, americans want history to show that a determined few took their side and triumphed over a powerful majority, a majority that clearly misread its mandate. now, mr. president, on another issue. early yesterday the administration announced what can only be viewed as the latest in a string of seriously misguided decisions related to the close of the secure facility

at guantanamo bay. the plans to move dozens of terrorist detainees from guantanamo bay, cuba to a prison in northern illinois. the explanation we used to get for moving detainees be on to american soil is that guantanamo's existence is an impotent recruiting tool for terrorists. feech you grant that, changing -- it's hard to see how changing guantanamo's mail egg dress would eliminate the problem. does anyone really believe al-jazeera will ignore the fact that enemy combatants are held on american soil. it is naive to think that the american left or al qaeda will be pacified by creating an internment camp in northern illinois, a gitmo north instead of a gitmo south. this is a series of misguided decisions. first thrrvetion the decision to

-- first, there was the decision to close guantanamo on an arbitrary date without a plan to do so. americans expect their government to protect them. that's why americans overwhelmingly rejected the idea of closing guantanamo. then there was the decision to bring the self-avowed mastermind of the attack, khalid sheikh mohammed into new york city for trial. we learned this week that the administration plans to give other terrorists the benefits of a civilian trial in the united states. and now there's this. according to the reports we've seen the administration intends to bring as many 100 -- 100 foreign terrorist fighters from guantanamo bay to america. a plan would make our nation less safe, not more so. what's worse, the defenders of the proposal don't even seem to get the implications. rather than even attempt to

reassure people about safety, politicians in illinois are trumenting this -- trumpeting this, get this, mr. president, as a jobs program. a jobs program. that's how out of touch they are. democratic politicians are so eager to spend the failure of the trillion dollar stimulus that they're now talking about national security in the language of saved and created jobs. the advocates of closing guantanamo without a plan just can't seem to make up their minds as to why it's a good idea. first, we were told we had to bring them here because guantanamo was a dangerous symbol. the whole symbolism over safety argument. now, with unemployment in double digits, it's being sold, incredibly, as a jobs project. some kind of soafl ready plan. -- shovel-ready plan. leaving aside the absurdity of this as a jobs program, let's get to the core issue here.

the core issue is this: moving some of the worst terrorists on earth to u.s. soil on its face is more dangerous than leaving them where they are. nobody could argue with that. make no mistake, this decision, if implemented, will increase the threat to security at home. let's count the ways, the ways in which it increases the threats of security here in the united states. there will now be another terrorist target in the heartland of america. an obvious one, at that, right near the mississippi river. the f.b.i. director has already stated his concerns about the radicalization of other prisoners that could happen by moving terrorists here. there's also the danger of detainees communicating with terrorists on the outside. that's happened in the past, a danger that would undoubtedly increase with the additional legal rights detainees will enjoy once they are moved into the u.s.

and then there's the danger that the detainees could sue their way to freedom. that the detainees could sue their way to freedom. before the first detainee has even set foot in the united states, their lawyers stand ready to challenge in court the administration's decision to incarcerate detainees indefinitely in the u.s. by purposefully moving detainees here, the administration is making it easier for the detainees and their lawyers to succeed in doing so. the supreme court has repeatedly held that foreign nationals have more rights if they are present on u.s. soil than if they are not. we've already seen application of this principle. we've seen a federal judge order detainees released to enter the u.s. only to be reversed because the detainees at the time did not enjoy the advantage of being present in the u.s., an advantage the obama

administration intends to confer on them. and then there's the case of the so-called shoe bomber, richard reid, who narrowly failed in his effort to blow up a passenger jet in midair. now, americans might recall that reid ended up in a supermax facility in colorado. they might not recall what happened next. not satisfied with his conditions of confinement, reid sued the government. he said he wanted to be place in less restrictive conditions where he could watch tv, order periodicals and learn arabic. he got his wish. the obama administration acceded to reid's demands. he's been placed in the general prison population, a less restrictive environment where he can speak with the media and where his mail will no longer be regularly monitored by the f.b.i. is this how we should treat people who attempt to blow up

commercial airliners? we will no longer have the f.b.i. routinely monitor the mail? this is an outrage, an absolute outrage. unfortunately, it's not an isolated case. just a few years ago this same supermax allowed terrorist inmates to communicate with terrorist network abroad. at the time our democratic colleagues criticized these security lapses. the senior senator from new york said federal prisoner officials *fr officials were -- quote -- "incompetent when it comes to detecting possible terrorist activity in federal prisons." and he noted past evidence of terrorist communicating from live terror cells from inside prison walls. that's the senior senator from new york. our democratic colleagues now raise concerns about similar potential lapses at the proposed gitmo north.

this decision is ill-advised on multiple levels. it is also prohibited by law. fortunately, if and when the obama administration submits its plan for closing guantanamo, congress will have an opportunity to revisit the prohibition and current law that bars -- i repeat -- bars the transfer into the u.s. of guantanamo detainees for the purposes of indefinite detention. that's against the law. at that point we'll decide whether this prohibition ought to be removed and whether millions of dollars ought to be appropriated to make this ill-advised decision a reality. in short, mr. president, congress will have a chance to vote on whether we should treat the national security needs of the country as just another local jobs project. i suspect the american people will be no more supportive of this idea than they were about the administration's plan to

close guantanamo by an arbitrary date. security can't take a back seat to symbolism, and it certainly shouldn't take a back seat to some parochial jobs program. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved. under the previous order, the senate will resume consideration of h.r. 3590 which the clerk will report. the clerk: calendar number 175, h.r. 3590, an act to amend the internal revenue code of 1986 to modify the first-time home buyers credit in the case of members of the armed forces and certain other federal employees, and for other purposes. the presiding officer: under the previous order, the first hour will be equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees, that the majority controlling the first half and the republicans controlling the second half. mr. baucus: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana.

mr. baucus: mr. president, under current law, the estate tax disappears next year. that is in 16 days. but then snaps back to a 55% rate the year after. i believe clearly that is not sound policy. the estate tax should not be zero in one year and then snapped up to a very height hi rate the subsequent year -- a very high rate the skwraoerpbt. the current law has the rates slowly declining and the exemptions slowly increasing. individual exemption now is $3.5 million. and if congress takes no action, beginning january 1 next year the estate tax will be zero. zero tax on the estate. another consequence will occur taofplt that is all -- too. that is all heirs of the estate will find the property they receive will be subject to a

carry-over basis. currently today property received by heirs is subject to a step-up basis. the heirs get the benefits as of the date of the decedent's death. if this law expires, not only will there be no estate tax paid next year on any estate, but also the heirs will no longer have the step-up basis and the assets they receive, but rather have a carry-over basis. there are several problems with letting the current law expire next year. one is the yo-yo effect. it is an outrage, mr. president, that the congress allows estate taxes to change so much, particularly near the end, that is a lower rate this year, with expiration. zero rate next year. and the next year, following year up to a much higher rate. the second problem, frankly, is i do think there should be an

estate tax on the highest-value estates. i think that's just good policy. third, people don't talk much about it, but if the current law expires, every heir will be subject to a carry-over basis on his or her taxes when that taxpayer who is heir at a later date sells the property and has to pay capital gains on that property. what are the problems with that? first of all, massive recordkeeping confusion. massive. if this -- i'm going to propose an extension to the current law. if that is not passed, if we do not extend our estate tax law, all taxpayers, all heirs will be subject to massive, massive confusion in trying to determine the value of their underlying asset when they, the heirs, later try to sell.

the value of a stepped-up basis to the heirs is obviously a lower capital gains tax but it's also certainty. people pretty much know what the value is of the death of the decedent. i can't emphasize so strongly how much confusion there will be if on january 1 -- and if my consent i'm about to propound is not agreed to, there is so much confusion because heirs will be receiving property subject to a stepped-up basis, not a carry-over basis. currently when the heir receives that asset, there's much less capital gain paid presumably when that heir later sells that asset. for all those reasons, mr. president, i think here it is mid-december, the only responsible thing to do to

prevent the yo-yo effect -- how in the world are people looking at how to plan their estates? if the law is changing all the time. at the 2009 rates, people had a pretty good idea what that is. i would like to see the rate go much lower and exemptions higher. we kind of level off 2009 estate tax laws which basically the rates are sort of set, are set and the exemptions set. that's what i think most people in the country are anticipating congress will eventually do, eventually pass. it's so irresponsible to further the yo-yo effect by allowing the current law to expires and create all this massive confusion, this chaos that applies to heirs beginning january 1 buff this -- because of this change in the step-up

basis. so, mr. president, i ask consent that the senate proceed to immediate consideration of h.r. 5154 just received from the house and at the desk. that the baucus substitute be read and agreed to, the bill as amended be read three times, passed and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table and any statements appear in the appropriate place in the record as if read without further intervening action or debate. the presiding officer: is there objection? mr. mcconnell: mr. president? the presiding officer: the republican leader. mr. mcconnell: reserving the right to object, there's nothing that outrageous the -- outrages the american people more than the thought that they will have to visit the i.r.s. and the undertaker on the same day. surveys indicate americans, even after informed that the estate tax may not apply to them, object to it in principle. i'm going to ask that the

chairman of the finance committee modify his request in the following way. that there be an amendment considered that reflects a permanent portable and unified $5 million exemption indexed for inflation and a 35% top rate. and further, that the amendment be agreed to, the bill then be read a third time and passed with the motion to reconsider laid on the table. and before the chair rules, i want to acknowledge my good friend, senator kyl, the republican whip, who's been our leader on this side of the issue and who crafted a proposal along with the democratic leader on this issue, senator lincoln of arkansas, that is consistent with the consent agreement that -- with the modification that i'm now asking the chairman of the finance committee to make. this approach would provide certainty and clarity to all taxpayers, especially small

businesses and farmers, whereas the u.c. propounded by the chairman of the finance committee would only create additional confusion with three different rates coming into effect in the course of a 12-month period. summing it up, i would say to my friend from montana, i ask that he modify his unanimous consent agreement in the way that i described. mr. baucus: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i don't think this is the way to do business here, that is to enact an estate tax law here on the floor of the senate without any notice. and also because there's so many considerations here that senators on both sides want to look at, and it would be improper to agree to that modification. so i have to object. mr. mcconnell: i object. the presiding officer: objection is heard. the senator from montana. mr. baucus: mr. president, i yield five minutes to the senator from new mexico. mr. bingaman: mr. president?

the presiding officer: the senator from new mexico. mr. bingaman: let me speak in support of what senator baucus, the senator from montana, attempted to do just now, and that was to get a short-term extension of current law with regard to the estate tax so that we would have a $3.5 million skpeplgs from the estate -- exemption from the estate tax into next year for a period while we actually settled on what type of permanent change in the estate tax law is appropriate. as the senator from montana pointed out, the circumstance we find ourselves in right now, given the current state of the lawmakers is just untenable and irresponsible. what the current status is is that if a person dies in the next 16 days, if their estate exceeds $3.5 million, they will

be subject to an estate tax. and a couple whose estate, the second member of the estate dies and their estate would be, exceed $7 million, they would be subject to an estate tax. after the next 16 days, beginning on january 1 of the next year, we have no estate tax under -- under the law as it now exists. but at the end of next year, or the beginning of 2011, the estate tax comes back at a 55% rate. now, that is not a reasonable set of circumstances for the american public to have to face. and not only is it a 55% rate that comes back on january 1 of 2011, the exemption, the amount that is exempt from the estate tax is refused to $1 -- reduced

to $1 million. so that is obviously adverse to many families in this country. now, what's happened here on the senate floor is that the senator from montana has said, let's do a short-term extension of the surnt estate tax -- current estate tax provisions for a few months and -- and get a resolution of what should be done on a permanent basis. the republican leader has said, no, here is a permanent solution. take this permanent solution or -- or we object. that -- that is not a responsible way for this body to proceed in my opinion. i do think that this issue that both senator reid and senator baucus have spoken about of this problem with the stepped-up basis going away for inherited assets is a very real problem. it is arcane, i understand that.

it sounds like accounting speak. but it is a very real problem for american families when they inherit property in the future to have to take the value for purposes of paying capital gains tax if that property is ever sold, they will have to go back and try to determine what was the basis that their parent or their -- the person from whom they inherited the property had in that -- in that property. it is -- it is a boo bookkeeping nightmare an will create great confusion for american families. clearly, right course is for us to do an extension of the current estate tax provisions, and then get agreement between the two parties as to what a long-term solution could be in the next couple of months. but that course, evidently, is being blocked.

the request was made yesterday. i understand by senator pryor to have a short-term extension. the republican leaders objected to that. the same objection has been raised to the request by senator baucus today. so i do think this is an unfortunate circumstance. it's a great disappointment to me us doing business in this fashion. and i know that there are many who think there should be no estate tax. i don't agree with that perspective. the estate tax in my state -- i went back and got the i.r.s. figures. there were 80 individuals in the year 2008 who wound up having to pay some estate tax, whose estates had to pay some estate tax in the state of new mexico. it does not apply to most individuals. but i do believe that it's appropriate that there be an

estate tax for large estates, and i do believe that we should have a consistent policy and it should not be something that is here today, gone tomorrow, back again in a much worse form at the beginning of january of 2011. and that's the course we're on today. i think it's very unfortunate and, again, i strongly support what the senator from montana was trying to accomplish with his unanimous consent request. mr. president, i yield the floor. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: i ask unanimous consent that senator kyl be permitted to speak up to five minutes and following his remarks the hour of controlled time on health care legislation begin. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: thank you, mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from arizona. mr. kyl: i find the argument that the chairman of the finance committee reminds me of -- of a story i was told in law school about the fellow accused of murdering his parents and he pled for mercy on the court

because he was an orphan. it seems to me since i asked the chairman of the committee numerous times this year to address this problem, the response always was, well, we're too busy, we're too busy with health care was the usual response. now that we find ourselves here at the end of the year, it's a little odd for the chairman to argue that all of a sudden we have a big emergency on our hands and, my goodness, we have to act. it's not as if we haven't known this issue was out there. nor as, senator bingaman just suggested, has it been a big mystery that the rate on the estate tax was going to go to zero next year. that's the 2001 law. we've known that for years and, frankly, people applauded the fact that there's not going to be -- not going to be an estate tax next year. the only problem is if the people on the other side of the aisle try to repeal that law so that we do have an estate tax. i know that is their intention. they're creating the confusion. because the law has been known for 10 years that we're going to

have a zero rate. now, all of a sudden they say, oh, no, we can't let that happen. we're going to have to change it next year. since we think we'll be able to do that, we should extend what we have right now and not let the zero rate take hold. well, i suspect that great dilemma posed here is one that most folks would love to have as a problem. the dilemma being proposed here is that if the rate goes to zero, and the heirs of the property then decide to sell the property at some point, they'll have to pay a capital gains tax on that. well, mr. president, that's just fine. that's what most people would like to do. since this property -- or income is taxed twice. it's taxed once when you make the income and then it's taxed again when, if you have any of that leftover, you die, that's unfair. and what we've always argued is that the estate tax, therefore, should go away. and just leave the existing tax code where it is, which says,

and if somebody who inherits property later sells that property, sure, they should pay a capital gains tax on it. i think most people would thinks that a pretty good deal. capital gains tax is 15%. whereas the estate tax, under the proposals of my friend from montana, would go to 45%, that's between paying 45% and 15%, i think it's clear what small business folks an farmers would like to do. and, of course, the original basis of property is the basis for paying the tax. again, if you put that question to small business folks or farmers, they will tell you they would rather pay the capital gains tax than an estate tax of 45%. mr. president, i'm going to ask unanimous consent that the -- that i insert in the record at the conclusion of my remarks an editorial in "the wall street journal," from december 11th, called "the tax that won't die." death blow, night of the living death tax. i ask unanimous consent that that be inserted in the record.

the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kyl: among the things pointed out in this editorial is, they say we've long argued that the economically it optimal fairest death tax rate is zero. so it's a double tax on savings an capital. the correct way to tax a gain on the value of the assets bequeathed to an heir is with a capital gains tax of 15% when the assets are sold rather than at the time of the funeral of the original owner. and i think that says it all, mr. president so i would hope that the problem that my friends are so concerned about, first of all, they recognize it's a problem they themselves manufactured by not getting around to doing anything about this until the 11th hour. secondly it's a problem that they don't have to worry about if they leave the existing law alone. if your heirs sell the property after that, they'll have to pay a capital gains. ask them which they'd rather do,

pay a 15% rate or 45% rate. i think the answer to that is pretty clear. the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: mr. president, clearly the correct public policy is to achieve continuity with respect to the estate tax. and if we don't get the estate tax extended now these days, even for a very short period of time, say three months, will clearly work to do this retroactively so that when the law is changed, whoever it's changed, or if it's extended next year, that they'll have retroactive application. the uncertainty for tens of thousands of middle-class families need certainty to stop the yo-yo effect. that's why retro application of anything that we pass next year makes sense. right now 99.7% of estates don't have to worry about estate tax.

if we don't extend current law, many heirs are going to have to worry a lot more about capital gains. the potential for high-income households to take advantage of the temporary reductions for the gift tax and implementation of gift tax to do massive estate planning, by having billions of dollars of expense to the taxpayers and beyond this what congress is doing is a huge benefit for the lawyers and accountants who do all of the estate planning. right thing to do is extend current law for a brief period of time until we -- quote -- "get our act together to determine what estate tax law should be." that's what the right thing is to do. i'm concerned that the other side of the aisle won't let us do the right thing, extending the current law for a while. mr. president, i -- the presiding officer: the senator from montana has the floor. mr. baucus: mr. president, for the benefit of senators, we're now back on the health care

bill. i will lay out today's program. it has been nearly four weeks since the majority leader proceeded to move to the health care reform bill. this is the 15th day that the senate considered the bill. the senate has conducted 18 roll call votes. today the senate will debate the motion to commit regarding taxes offered last night by the senator from texas, senator hutchison. and under the previous order, later this morning, we expect that the senator from vermont, senator sanders, will offer his amendment, number 2837 on the national single payer system. this morning the first hour of debate will be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or designees and the majority will control the first half hour the republicans the second half-hour. we expect the senate will conduct votes today in relation to the hutchison motion and the sanders amendment. also today the house of representatives is scheduled to act on department of defense appropriations act. which also contains a number of final year-end measures. so we will look forward to

receiving that measure in the senate as well. mr. president, i yield 10 minutes to the senator from ohio, and then 15 minutes to the senator from delaware. mr. brown: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. brown: thank you, mr. president. i thank senator baucus for yielding. less than -- less than -- and i thank senator kaufman, also, for his yielding of time. less than 5% of cancer patients enroll in clinical trials. only 6% of people who suffer from severe, chronic illnesses participate. these low participation rates means it's harder to conduct a timely trial. in fact, delays in patient recruitment for clinical trials account for an average of almost five months loss per try. nearly 80% of trials run overscheduled by more than a month. only 6% are completed on time. clinical trial delays lead to

treatment development delays, whether it's the next breakthrough drug or some other lifesaving trerpy. without clinical drugs, -- without clinical trials, medical innovation would come to a halt. unfortunately, mr. president, one major reason more patients don't enroll in clinical trials is that their insurance company coverage discourages it. insurers take advantage of lax regulations that allow them to deem all care for a person in a clinical trial as experimentation. even the routine services they would get if they weren't in the trial like x-rays and blood tests and doctor visits. this draconian policy scares many patients away from potentially lifesaving trials. patients can't afford to pay out-of-pocket -- understand they don't expect the insurance company to pay for the trial itself. no one is suggesting that or thinks that. but insurers shouldn't be

allowed to use a patient's participation in a clinical trial as an excuse to deny them coverage for standard care. to address this problem, senator hutchison of texas and i have filed amendment 281. this amendment requires all insurance companies to simply live up to the promises they have made to their premium-paying policyholders. it means covering the cost of routine care for clinical trial participants. 30-some states have enacted a similar clinical trial policy for their state regulated insurance plans. medicare has already enacted a similar clinical trials policy for its beneficiaries. the v.a. and d.o.d. have enacted similar trial policy for their members. even some insurance companies are already doing the right thing in covering the routine costs associated with clinical trials. because many are no. and because there are no standard criteria by which appeals can be adjudicated, countless patients who would otherwise enroll in clinical

trials don't. take, for example, cheryl freeman from dayton, ohio. cheryl and her husband craig visited my office in washington in 2007. she was a retired school teacher suffering from multiple myoloma. she had insurance through her husband's program. when she enrolled in a clinical trial recommended by her doctors at james hospital in ohio state, her insurance company balked refusing to cover the routine care cost. understand this. she had insurance. she had good insurance. she thought she had good insurance. she enrolled in a clinical trial and the insurance -- paid for by the people doing the clinical trial, the hospitals or drug companies or whomever, the insurance company said we're not with it going to cover routine care for her anymore since she's in a clinical trial. something she was entitled to with or without the clinical trial. regardless, she still needed to

visit her oncologist in dayton at least once a week for standard cancer monitoring including scans and blood tests. her her insurance company would stop covering the services if she enrolled in the trial. she hoped the trial would give her more time with her loved ones. she hoped it would help future patients diagnosed with the same type of cancer. but she wasn't willing to force her family into bankruptcy. so instead of devoting her energy towards combatting cancer, cheryl spent the last months of her life haggling with her insurance company. by the time her insurance company relented, it was too late. cheryl died on december 7, 2007. cheryl's husband, craig, wrote the following about the ordeal. no patient sh-f to fight -- should have to fight insurance when battling a disease such as cancer. tragically, cheryl's experience is not an isolated case n. ohio, one cancer hospital reported that over a third of patients who enrolled in clinical trial

over a six-month period were automatically denied access by their insurance company u. understand how that happens. you have decent insurance, you thought. you decide to enroll in a clinical trial. the insurance company quits covering you for the things it used to cover you for, the routine care you need as a patient. take jean bayman. i met jean, talked to jean. courageous man, loved his family. his family was so found of him, as you can see, when i saw him at the -- in columbus with his family. he was diagnosed in february 2010 with multiple my low massachusetts gene's doctor recommend a combination of standard treatment and clinical drugs. gene's insurance company threatened to stop paying for the care otherwise covered under the policy if he took his doctor's advice and enrolled in the clinical trial. if that's not rationing, mr. president, i don't know what is. gene died in june of this year never having the chance to participate in the cutting-edge research that might have saved

his life. gene wrote before he died, i don't want my health options limited by insurance companies concerned with the bottom line rather than the medical research my doctor prescribes. mark runyan also from ohio faced the same barrier. mark was being treated for multiple myeloma with standard care. his doctor recommended a new drug that might help him recover quicker. the insurance company refused to imply. another terrible lost opportunity. the clinical trial would have helped us learn more about which drugs we should administer to patients after stem cell transplants. in other words, while this most directly, most tragically, most painfully affected mark runyan and his family, it also affects most of us who have loved ones or who ourselves might come down with this disease and mark's

treatment, mark's clinical trial that he would liked to have enrolled in would have given him the opportunity to -- would have given all of us more scientific knowledge and information that would have been helpful. instead the insurer took a shortsighted view. mark writes i personally would rather make my medical decision with my doctor, the expert in my care, rather than my insurer. these stories should have ended differently. cheryl, gene, mark, all paid premiums to health insurance companies for years but when they got sick and were referred to a clinical trial, the insurance company refused to pay for the benefits guaranteed under its policy. health insurance reform should be about making sure insurance companies can't renege on their commitments. it's about insuring that insurance companies can't write sham policies that allow for rescissions, riders and exceptions and bring on more horror stories than we care to recount. it is about closing loopholes to help insurance companies, are

great at taking advantage of, as some are fond of saying, one step ahead of the sheriff. this would help advance the most important research in diseases. it is a public insurance for all of us. we're going to find a cure for alzheimer's and a.l.s. and the hundreds of others diseases killing millions of americans each year. we need to encourage in every way possible participation in clinical trials, not erect barriers against that participation. this amendment is endorsed by the lance armstrong foundation, american academy of pediatrics, susan komen for the cure advocacy alliance, american cancer society, alzheimer's foundation, dozens of other national organizations. along with senator hutchison, this is a bipartisan amendment sponsored by senators franken, whitehouse, and specter. please join us in voting for this. i yield the floor.

mr. kaufman: mr. president, i ask consent to speak in morning business for up to 15 minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: my colleagues have heard me speak in recent weeks about the troubling trends in our financial markets. the growing use of dark pools and high-frequency trading, increasing market fragmentation and looming potential regulatory gaps in the securities and exchange commission. today i want to talk about an economic threat that encompasses these developments and why i think they are negatively affecting the long-term health of our economy. after suffering through the most severe recession in decades, we are now in the midst of the most fragile of roeufrs. mr. president -- recoveries. mr. president, it's evident to all that we are in a jobs crisis. we need a laser-like focus on innovation policies that encourage industry to create jobs. this challenge comes not just from the financial crisis and the recession that followed, the american economy has slowed in

its efforts to create jobs for the past decade. according to the bureau of labor statistics, the united states has 108.5 million private nongovernmental jobs as of september of this year. but while our population has grown 9% in the last nine years, the number of jobs now available is essentially the same as june of 1999. let me repeat that. the number of jobs now available is essentially the same as june of 1999, over ten years ago. many of the jobs this economy did create in the past decade were in the financial, housing and consumer-led retail sectors. and two of these -- financial and housing -- were bubbles that have now burst. without these sectors playing a key role in providing jobs, many americans are asking: where will the future job creation most likely occur? in the past, job creation would

often come from the raft of small, newly financed, often innovative companies that raise their capital with the help of wall street underwriters. thousands of times i've heard in the last months that the recovery's going to come because of small businesses, those that raise their capital, and many of those raise their capital with the help of wall street underwriters. now, mr. president, i'm deeply concerned that there's a choke point in our efforts to return to economic vibrancy, a choke point that can be found on wall street. our capital markets, which have long been the envy of the world, are no longer performing one of the their most one -- one of the their most essential funk -- functions, known as i.p.o.'s which small companies used to innovate and most importantly to create jobs. look at this khafrplt there is

an i.p.o. crisis in this country. according to to a report released last month by the accounting firm grant thornton, the i.p.o. market in the united states has practically disappeared. that in turn, according to a second grant thornton study has had a ripple effect on the u.s. stock markets. with a number of stock listings since 1999 dropping 22% in absolute terms and 53% when factoring inflation-adjusted g.d.p. growth. new companies have been shed from the nasdaq, new york and american stock exchanges faster than being created. from almost 7,000 publicly listed companies in 1991 and nearly 8,900 in 1997 during the dot-com bubble, to 5,400 listed in 2008, a turn of event grant thornton dubbed the great depression listings. the united states is probably the only market in the world

with if he the senator from unanimous. the may -- only market in the world with this phenomenon. these companies have grown from the 1990 levels. look at this chart. this is what is going to take us out of the recession. it's going to be listings. look at where we are. the united states in relation to hong kong, tokyo, australia and the other markets. the effects of the i.p.o. crisis have rippled through the u.s. economy. because 92% of job growth occurs after a company goes public, job creation may have been stunted by these developments. according to the grant thornton study, if the i.p.o. market was working properly today, we would have as many as 10 million to 20 million additional high-quality jobs for middle-class americans. even if this estimate is off by a factor of 10, this failure of wall street to provide capital

to small companies may be costing our economy millions of jobs. mr. president, most every large company begins as a small company. that's axiomatic. and the i.p.o. market has been hit hardest at the smallest end of the market. the immediate i.p.o. for 2009 was $135m. let me say that again. $135 million. two years ago i.p.o.'s at 10 million were routine and routinely succeeded. take a look at this chart and look at these companies. venture capital plays a critical role in long-term and investment in growing our economy and creating jobs. indeed, when you look at these 17 venture-backed capitals who raised a total of $367 million in capital, and today provide 470,000 u.s. jobs are one of our

economy's biggest success stories. look at the list. think where we'd be today if these companies were not able to get i.p.o.'s: ado pw*e, computer associates, intel, yahoo. these are the companies where the growth came from. right now in our present market they cannot go public the way they went public originally. a host of well-intentioned changes, some technological, some regulatory and many with unintended consequences crated this situation. online brokerage firms with their $25 trades first appeared in 1996, hastening the decline of traditional full-service brokerage firms who charged $250 a trade. there was an advantage to those hefty fees, however. they helped maintain an underwriting apparatus that encouraged small businesses to go public and support a substantial research base that attracted institutional and retail clients.

the rich ectosism which included many companies helped their institutional clients take part in i.p.o.'s marketed following offerings no longer exist today. structural changes in the u.s. capital market dealt the final cue -- coup. it became increasingly difficult for traditional retail brokers to remain profitable. regulated companies which vastly expanded the electronic marketplace. there's been an explosive growth in high-frequency trading which takes advantage of the market's highly automated format to send more than 1,000 trades a second ricocheting from computer to computer. the result, as the economist magazine wrote last week, is that high-frequency traders who

have come to dominate the stock markets within their computer-driven strategies pay less attention to small firms preferring to jump in and out of larger, more liquid shares. this is a situation that stands as a wall, a veritable wall against a sustained economic recovery. one of the very vital tasks before congress is to help unemployed americans by crafting innovation policies that we rebuild our economy, catalyze growth and create high-quality jobs for struggling americans. that is our number-one job in the congress right now. i think if you ask every one of the 100 senators they would say that's the case. we must identify the causes of last year's debacle and apply them to our current economic challenges in order to help the millions of struggling americans and to avert a future disaster.

mr. president, the fact that wall street has resumed its risky as we know all too well potentially disastrous behavior is simply inexcusable. in order to reverse this ominous trend and help companies create jobs and grow, we must restore the financial sector's historical role as a facilitator of long-term growth and not the source of one bubble after another. the question, finally, is this: how can we create a market structure that works for a $25 million initial public offering both in the offering and the secondary after market? if we can answer that question, mr. president, this country will be back in business. mr. president, i yield the floor. and suggest the absence of a quorum.

the presiding officer: the clerk will call the roll. quorum call: a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from delaware. mr. kaufman: i ask consent that the quorum call be dispensed with. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: i ask to speak in morning business for up to five minutes. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. kaufman: mr. president, i rise again to recognize one of america's great federal employees. last week in stockholm and oslo,

the 2009 noble laureates accepted their prizes. we awd all be aproud that -- we should all be proud that 11 of the 13 prizes were won by americans. this is -- as a -- my honoree today holds the distinction of having been the first federal employee to win a noble prize in physics for work performed while serving the public. our federal workplace compose of citizens who are highly educated an incredibly motivated. dr. william philips is the perfect example. a native pennsylvanian, william learned the importance of public service and hard work from a young age. his hour, an immigrant from italy, and his father, a descendant of the american revolutionaries were the first in their families to attend college. they both pursued careers as social workers in pennsylvania's coal mining region.

william, along with his brother and sister, grew up in a home where reading an education were emphasized. as a boy william fell in love with science and tinkered with modern rockets and chemical compounds in the basement of his family's home. while attending college in the 1960's, william delved into research, after graduating pursued his dock rat at m.i.t. during his time at m.i.t., the field of laser cooling was just heating up and he wrote his thesis on the collision of atoms using this new it can knowledge yism in 1978 he began to work at the national institute of standard technology or nis -- nist at department of commerce, he pursued further research in laser cooling and his research opened up a new field of atomic research and expand our knowledge of physics.

he has found important applications for precision time keeping which is important for our national security. in 1997 william received the noble prize for physics, along with two other scientists. well of his fellow lawsuit yets that year was another dedicated federal employee who now serves as our secretary of energy. after winning his noble prize, william made a commitment to use his fame to promote science education and public service. he regularly speaks to student groups and serves as a mentor to graduate students in his field. william won the prestigious arthur s. fleming award for public service in 1987 and honored with his 2006 service for career achievement. he and his wife jane live in gathersburg maryland and active in their community and church. today william continues to work in nist as the leader of the

laser cooling and trapping group. i hope all my colleagues will join me in honoring dr. william philips and all those who work at the national institute of standards technology for their dedicated service an important contribution to our national life. they keep us at the forefront of science and human discovery. they do us all proud. mr. president, i yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection, sorded. the clerk -- so ordered. the clerk will call the roll. mr. mccain: unanimous consent that the quorum call be suspended. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mccain: mr. president, could i say before my colleagues begin, i think it's important for us to point out where we are here on december 16, 2009.

we are now almost a year into the discussion and debate about -- quote -- "reforming health care in america." and we'll still don't know what's in the bills. we still don't know the specifics of what we are considering here. i've had the honor of serving here for a long period of time. but i've never seen a process like this. i have never seen a situation where a major piece of legislation is not before the body and is somehow being negotiated and renegotiated amongst the other side and, meanwhile, according to "the washington post" this morning, a newspaper that i always have the utmost trust and confidence in. i'd like to say that -- that the title is "public cooling to health care reform as debate drags on poll finds."

and i -- quote -- "as the senate struggles to meet a self-imposed year-end deadline to complete work on legislation, a new "washington post" abc news poll finds the public genuinely fearful that a revamped system will require higher cost and worsening the quality of care." a remarkable commentary about where we are in this legislation. and one of the interesting things is this poll goes back to april where in april 57% of the american people approve and 29% disapproved of the president's handling of health care. today it's 53% disapprove and 44 approve. which -- 44% approve. which means the american people, the more they find out about this, the less they like it and the more concerned they. according to the poll, again --

quote --"the question, medicare is the health insurance program for people 55 and over, do you think that medicare would strengthen the health care program, weaken medicare or have no effect on it? the american people have figured it out. among seniors, those that are in medicare, 12% say it would strengthen, 22%, no effect, and 57% of seniors in america believe, and they are correct, that this proposal would weaken -- would weaken medicare, the benefit that they paid into and that they have earned. so, mr. president, let me just say, again, if i plead with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the majority leader, let's stop this. the american people don't approve it. let's sit down and work together. let's have real negotiations. let's even have the c-span cameras in as the president promised october a year ago. this present legislation spends too much, taxes too much, and

reduces benefits for american citizens as far as overall health care is concerned and including medicare as the american people have figured it out so i -- i welcome my colleagues here. i see dr. coburn is here. but, let me restate, again it's time to say stop. it's time to start listening to the american people. it's time to start being straightforward with the american people because the american people need to know what we're doing and they don't. the minority -- the distinguished senator from illinois just last friday, when i asked him: what's in the bill? he said, none of us know what's in the bill. so i would ask my friend from oklahoma, what is -- isn't what's happening, we have a proposal, we send it to c.b.o. c.b.o. sends back that -- the numbers that they don't like. so they try to fix it. send it back to c.b.o., send it

back again. that's why only one senator, the majority leader, knows what's going on. and so -- i -- i hope -- what is the parliamentary situation? i ask the president. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, i was under the impression that there would be a 30-minute allocation for colloquy for our side and i'm not sure that when we start that -- when we start that process. the presiding officer: the republican -- the republican side has 25 minutes and 15 seconds. mrs. hutchison: how many? the presiding officer: 25 minutes and 15 seconds. mr. mccain: i thank the -- mr. president, i think i've made my point here. i'd like to yield to -- i'd like to ask unanimous consent to have a colloquy with the senator from south dakota, the senator from texas, the senator from oklahoma, and senator from

wyoming. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. mccain: so -- a senator: if i might respond to the senator's question. mr. coburn: is one of the things that our president has promised is transparency. and we're going to see at some time in the next week or 10 days another bill. whatever the deal is and it would just seem to me that 72 hours with a complete c.b.o. score, much like was asked by 12 members on their side before we have to take up or make any maneuvers on that is something that everybody would agree to since nobody knows except for harry reid and c.b.o. knows what's in this bill right now. at a later time after we finish this colloquy, i will be making that unanimous consent request. mrs. hutchison: thank you. i thank the senator from oklahoma because i think it is very important before we start talking about passing a bill or having a cloture on a bill, i

think the senator from oklahoma is making the main point and i think the senator from arizona was making a very good point that i was hoping to -- to work with him on and that is where are we now? the republicans have put forward a reform bill for our health care system that isn't a government takeover. and it's not going to be half a trillion dollars in taxes and it's not going to be half a trillion dollars in medicare cuts. the republican proposal would do what health care reform should do. it would lower the costs. it would increase risk pools so that small business would be able to offer health care coverage for their employees. it would have medical malpractice reform so that we would be able to lower the cost of frivolous lawsuits cuttin cutting $50 billion to $100 billion out of the cost of health care making it more accessible for more people. it would give tax credits for

individuals who would buy their own health care coverage to offset that cost. none of that would be a big government takeover of health care. and that's what we have been trying to put forward here, but we haven't had a seat at the table. we haven't the capability to say what our proposals would be because we haven't even seen the proposed new bill yet and we've been talking about the tax increases that are going to burden small business at a very hard time in this country's present and we've also been talking about half a trillion dollars in medicare cuts, which i think has seriously caused many senior citizens to say, wait a minute. i don't want my medicare options cut. i don't want medicare advantage to be virtually taken away. so that's why we're here today.

because the pending business before the senate is the hutchison-thune motion to recommit this bill. to do a simple thing. it is to say that you will not start collecting the taxes until the program is in place. it's very simple. it's a -- the american -- it's the american sense of fair play. and that is that you don't start collecting taxes before you have a program that you might want to buy into. that's what the hutchison-thune motion to recommit does. it's very simple. it's a matter of fair play. i even question whether we have the right to pass taxes for four years before you would ever see a program put in place. so we're going to try to do what's right by this body. and that is to say that th

the $100 billion in new taxes that will start next month, three weeks from now, will not start until there is a program put in place. because right now $100 billion in new taxes start next month, but there is no program that anyone can sign up to that would supposedly make it easier to get health care coverage in this country until 2014, four years away. four years away. i would just ask my colleague, the distinguished ranking member of the senate finance committee, if he believes that all of these new taxes would be fair to start before we would ever see a program not one year from now,

not two, not three but four years from now. i would just ask the distinguished ranking member of the senate finance committee if he believes that it would be fair for us to start the taxes in three weeks and then not start the program for four years. does that seem like a fair concept? mr. grassley: mr. president, you're absolutely right. and let me emphasize it this way: i was on a radio program in iowa yesterday where a lady called me up, and i've been saying as you just said, that for -- you've got to wait until 2014 for this program to take into effect. and she says "you're meaning to tell me that you're going to pass this bill right now, but we've got to wait till 2014 until we get any benefit from it?" she didn't talk about the taxes like you, but the taxes go into

effect. i think another smoke screen here is that you've got ten years of tax increases, fee increases, and the program is six years long, the taxes are ten years long. so it's easy for the congressional budget office to say, yeah, this is balanced and maybe even has a surplus in it. but over the long term, you know, this program does not cost just $848 billion. i hope i answered your question. mrs. hutchison: well, you did. it's interesting because you say well, maybe it's going to be break-even. how is it going to be break-even, i would ask my senate colleague from south dakota who is cosponsoring this amendment? how is it going to break even? a half a trillion dollars in medicare cuts, a half a trillion in tax increases? is that the way we should be saying to the american people we're going to reform health care. have we lost the purpose of the

bill, to make health care more affordable and accessible to the american people. i would just ask my khraoerbgs the senator from south dakota, who has worked on this issue for a long time, is that the concept of break even? mr. thune: i think the senator from texas has touched on a very important issue in the motion that she offers and which i cosponsor does lay out what i think is a simple principle of fairness that most americans understand. and that is when you implement public policy, if you're going to raise taxes on people, you ought to align the tax increases and the benefits so they start at essentially the same time. and what this bill does, the underlying bill does is it starts collecting taxes, increases taxes on americans four years before the major benefit provisions kick in. on january 1 of 2014, 99% of the spending under the bill kicks in but the taxes kick in less than

three weeks from today. 16 days from now is when the tax increases in the bill start. the tax on prescription drugs, the tax on medical devices, the tax on health plans all begin 16 days from now. so a lot of those taxes, they're going to be imposed upon the american economy are going to be passed on to people, small businesses and individuals in the form of higher premiums. so people are going to get higher premiums four years before they're likely to see any benefit from this. 99% of the spending under the bill doesn't kick in until january 1 of the year 2014 or 1,477 days from now. and i think that most americans, as they listen to the debate, believe, as i did, as a simple principle of fairness that you ought to align the benefits and the taxes in this. we had a vote yesterday on the crapo amendment that would recommit all the tax increases. many of us don't believe that raising taxes on small businesses when you've got an economy in recession is a smart

thing to do. it's going to cost us a lot of job. small businesses made that very clear to us. but i also think that in addition to the principle of fairness that is at play here when it comes to raising taxes four years prior to the benefits kicking in, you also need to have, i think, a transparent sort of understanding about what the costs of the bill are really going to be. because one of the reason that the revenue increases, the tax increases would be gone immediately, or 16 days from now, but the majority of the spending -- 99% of the spending -- doesn't occur until january 1 of 2014 and beyond is to understand the -- understate the true cost of th-fplt they want to bring the cost of the bill in until $1 trillion. going from here to 2019 it ends up to about $1.2 trillion on this chart. if you look at the fully implemented period, and that is 2014 when the benefits and

spending in the bill begin and take that through the next ten years, the total spending in the bill is $2.5 trillion over a ten-year period. i think that's one thing too that the american people need to know, that one of the reasons this is being done -- tax increases starting january 1 next year, 16 days from now, most of the benefits not starting until 1,477 days from now -- is so they can say this is only a $1 trillion bill, or under $1 trillion is the way it's been advertised when in fact it's going to cost $2.5 trillion when fully implemented. i would say to my colleague from texas we are here 16 days before christmas, before the christmas holiday and there are things congress needs to do. there are a number of fairly urgent matters that need to be dealt with before the end of the year, some of which have been mentioned on the floor this morning. but trying to jam through a new health care program, $2.5 trillion expansion of the federal government here in washington, 70 new government

programs, and try to jam it through in the next nine days or so before christmas seems to be done more out of a political necessity, the need for a political accomplishment or political victory than it does have anything to do with making good public policy. and so i would say to my colleagues that as our american people around this country are approaching this holiday season, the best thing that we could do, the best christmas gift we could give the american people, frankly, is for congress to adjourn and go home before passing this $2.5 trillion expansion. because what does it mean? if you're a small business person, the christmas gift you get this year is a big lump of coal from the american congress in the form of higher taxes. if you are a senior citizen, one of the 11 million senior citizens who is on medicare advantage and this bill passes, your christmas gift this year is you're going to see benefit cuts. and the same thing applies to many of our providers -- our hospitals, nursing homes, home

health agencies, hospices. if you are just an average american family who's worried about the high cost of health care, your christmas gift this year is, if this thing passes, that your health insurance premiums are going to continue to go up year over year at twice the rate of inflation. you lock in higher premiums for most people across this country. you raise taxes on small businesses. you cut benefits to medicare beneficiaries. and for future generations, you create a $2.5 trillion new entitlement program that they're going to be paying for as far as the eye can see. and i want to make one other point about that. the c.m.s. actuary last week said, in addition to all the other things they mentioned, the overall cost of health care is going to go up, 20% of hospitals are going to close, that the medicare cuts that are being proposed cannot be sustained on a permanent basis. well, if that's true, how is this going to be financed? either with more taxes or borrowing it, putting on the debt and handing the bill to future generations.

that's what we're left with because once you lock in a $2.5 trillion expansion of the federal government, it is going to be very, very hard to reduce the cost of it. the spending is not going to go away. the way it's going to be paid for if the medicare cuts are not sustainable is the tax increases -- and there are already tax increases in here -- would have to be increased even further. or worse yet for future generations if you're a young american, you're going to get it put on your bill. the senator from texas and my colleagues who are here this morning, we voted yesterday to get rid of the tax increases in the bill. the motion that she offers and that i cosponsor would at least, at least as a principle of fairness make sure that those tax increases don't begin before the benefits do. mrs. hutchison: mr. president? mr. president, the two physicians out of the 100 members of the united states senate are here this morning. they have talked for a long time about the quality of care. and they are the two who have the credibility on this.

so i would like to ask the senator from wyoming, dr. barrasso, to just talk about what's going to happen to the quality of health care in our country when you have a half a trillion dollars in medicare cuts, which we have discussed, and the bill that we are discussing today and the motion that senator thune and i are making that is going to put a higher cost of every prescription drug, every piece of medical equipment, and perhaps you would expand on what kind of medical equipment is needed for people to have the quality of life that we have in our country today. and then the insurance companies, which is of course going to raise the premium of every person who already has coverage. i would just ask the senator from wyoming, dr. barrasso, in your experience, how is this going to affect the quality of health care? mr. barrasso: i'm very

grateful for the senator from texas bringing this up. i had a town hall meeting last night, a telephone town hall meeting. and this specific amendment you're bringing here today came up with great praise for the people of wyoming, from the people of wyoming who said she's doing it right, leading the good fight. after i answer your question, i'm going to ask you how do we know the money's going to be there? that's the question that came up in the telephone town hall meeting. people in wyoming are concerned if this passes it's going to make health care harder for people in rural states like wyoming, like our sister state to the north -- montana. my colleague from montana is on the floor. doctor shortage will worsen. this is a headline news, front page of the washington tribune eagle. doctor shortage will worsen if this passes. a lot of folks concerned, communities where there's a sole hospital, maybe a sole physician provider, trying to recruit nursing and physician assistants. the doctor shortage will worsen as you see a situation where

they're going to be cutting medicare, $500 billion in medicare cuts, raising taxes $500 billion. and people that have insurance on this town hall meeting were very concerned their premiums are going to go up in spite of the fact the president promised families they would see their rates go down. people say don't cut my medicare, don't raise my taxes. don't make matters worse than they are right now. for the people of wyoming, they are afraid that the -- that matters will be made worse. now, "the washington post" had a major poll in the paper today, specifically asking seniors the question about medicare. because we're really talking about health care quality, the quality of care. and the question is: do you think health care reform will strengthen the medicare program, weaken the medicare program? what do you think it is? they asked specifically and broke it down to seniors. only one out of eight seniors in

this country, in this poll said it would actually get better. but the rest are saying no, it's going to get worse. that -- the seniors of the country who watch this most carefully, who know what it means to try to get health care in this country under the medicare program, a program that we know is going broke. and yet they're taking all this money not to save medicare but to start a whole new program. so we know the quality of care is going to go down. that's what the people in my home state and people i talked to from around the country are very concerned about. they're delighted you brought this amendment. i did a poll in the telephone town hall meeting are you for this bill or against the bill? some them say what's in it? we don't know which is exactly what the junior senator from indiana said in the days of the national press release, we're all being urged to vote for something, and we don't know the details of what's in it. the junior senator from indiana, a democrat. he doesn't know what's in it.

the people from wyoming don't know what's in it. they know taxes start immediately, benefits not for four years. they want to know how do they know the money is going to be there four years from now? mrs. hutchison: i think that is a very important question. here we are going to start collecting the tax four years from when the program is put in place, and the distinguished senator from oklahoma, the other physician in this body, nose that we've had promises from the federal government before. but i can't remember a time when we started collecting a tax for a purpose that would be four years away, and what on earth could people expect to actually be there when the program kicks in? the program is going to have to be implemented. it's going to have to be brought up to speed. i'm sure there will be changes. what would you think that your patients that you still care for

in oklahoma, or the ones and the experience that you've had, how do you think that people are going to react to having higher costs in all of these areas of health care for four years, even a tax on the high-income plans, not high-income people having those plans, but high coverage that a union member might have that will start being taxed in 2013, one year before the program takes effect. how do you thinks that going to affect quality of health care that people can expect and the cost to them out-of-pocket when there would be nothing even on the drawing boards for four years? mr. coburn: to answer the senator's question, number one, we know that oklahoma state employs the health insurance plan, in 2013 will be considered a cadillac plan. that's every state worker in the state of oklahoma. and they can hardly afford their

co-pays and their premiums to that plan today. so what we know is we're going to tax all the oklahoma workers. and many of those are school teachers who happen to be my patients. and they're struggling today. so this disconnect -- mrs. hutchison: i say to the senator from oklahoma, you're saying that a school teacher is probably not making $200,000 or more. mr. coburn: not at all. mrs. hutchison: yet, we were promised that there would be no taxes. no harm to people making under $200,000. remind me if there's a teacher in oklahoma -- because i know there's not one in texas making over $200,000. mr. coburn: well, our teachers wish they made what the teachers in texas make, but they don't. but they don't make anywhere close to $200,000. it affects the department of human service workers. but it also was going to impact through the premium increase that's we're going to see that are going to come about before this plan is implemented --

we're going to see premium increases so the small businesses that have -- that are now covering are going to have massive premium increases. we're going to see almost the individuals who are buying in the open, individual market themselves are going to see premium increases. and the fact is that's all going to happen before the first benefit -- the first real benefit other than preexisting condition illnesses, before anybody sees any benefit to that. the other thing that's not talked about is with the skewing of this, and with the relatively low tax on not complying, our youngest, healthier people are going to say, i don't want any insurance. because all i have to do is pay the first year $250 and even less up to $750 and i can save thousands of dollars every year and not buy insurance and buy it when i get sick. we will see everything skewed in the insurance market. that's going to drive the premiums up. my constituents, plus my patients, are not happy about

the delay. if we're going -- if we're going to make this what i believe fatal mistake for our country in terms of quality of health care, then we ought to match the revenues with the expenses. mrs. hutchison: that's exactly what the senator from south dakota and i are trying to do. we are trying to make sure that americans will not -- will not pay taxes and increase prices on prescription drugs, on health -- our coverage that we do have, the policies that we do have. and the equipment that is so necessary for health care services. senator thune and i want to do what is basic fairness and very simple. and that is to say the program starts and the taxes start at the same time. that is a tradition that we have had in this country for years. we don't tax people. -- we don't tax people four

years from having any kind of program in place that they could choose from that might benefit them. we don't do that. that's not the american way. it's certainly not anything that we've done before. and what in the world would people expect to happen in four years? what if this plan is changed? what if the people rise up and say: we don't want this plan and they say, no way and they've been paying higher premiums an higher health care -- and higher health care costs already? it's a downpayment where you're not sure where the end is going to be. it's like buying the house and saying, now, in four years we're going to give you the key to these houses. we're going to give you the key to the house that you bought four years from now. oh, well, maybe there will be a change in condition, but you're going to get it.

maybe it will be damaged. maybe it will be worn. maybe it will have a fire that starts in part of it. but you'll get those keys, and then something will be there for you, we promise you. we're from the government. and we're going to promise you that. mr. president, that's not good enough. that's not what we owe the american people and it's not health care reform. and i would just ask my senator -- my colleague from south dakota, who's the cosponsor of this amendment, if he -- if he agrees that as a matter of simple fairness, openness, transparency to the american people, health care reform should not mean four years of taxes before any program is put in place. mr. thune: i would say to my colleague from texas, the taxes, the fees, the tax increase, in your motion, our motion states that it ought to be in line with the benefits.

the benefits, the exchanges -- and, frankly, the substance of this bill begins in 2014, the individual mandate, the state exchanges, the subsidies, as i said, premium tax credits, medicaid expansion, the employer mandate, 2014, government plan, 2014. the substance of this bill begins in 2014. unfortunately, the tax increases begin four years earlier, 16 days from now. 16 days from now, january 1 of this year is when the taxes start being raised. the c.b.o. said that those tax increases will be passed on in the form of higher premiums to people across this country. the benefits start 1,477 days from now and so, mr. president, what we would simply say in this motion is let's recommit this and bring it back out with the tax increases, if there are going to be tax increases, and many of us don't believe there should be, which is why we voted for the crapo motion yesterday. if you are going to raise taxes on small businesses and families

an individuals, at least align those so that they and the policy and the intals of this -- substance of this bill which begins four years from now are synchornized so we're not slapping a huge new tax increase on american small businesses in the middle of a recession an passing on those higher costs, which is what they will do, to people in this country in the form of higher premiums. the senator from texas, this is a very straightforward, simple motion. i hope our colleagues on both sides will support it. it is matter of principle of fairness when it comes to making policy i think the american people have come to expect. we ought to be honest and give the american people a complete understanding of what this bill really costs. because they have done what they've done by -- by instituting the tax increases immediately and the spending four years from now, it understates the overall cost of this legislation. the american people need to know that this is a $2.5 trillion bill when it's fully implemented. and the only reason that they can bring that in under that

number is because they start raising taxes immediately and don't start paying benefits out for another four years. i hope the senator from texas, when we get this vote, it will be a big bipartisan vote here in the united states senate. and i hope that we -- i hope that we will make a -- a change in this legislation that -- that implements some semblance of fairness and also gives as you true reflection of what this bill really costs. mrs. hutchison: i thank the senator from south dakota. just to -- to recap. the amount that would actually be collected before any program is put in place would b be $73 billion already collected. already collected. and that will include, as the senator from oklahoma mentioned, school teachers from oklahoma, who are considered to have these high benefit plans. a school teacher making $50,00 making $50,000, $60,000 a year with a high-benefit plan. do you know what the tax is on that high-benefit plan?

do you know what the tax is on that oklahoma school teacher? it's a 40% -- the presiding officer: the senator's time has expired. mrs. hutchison: mr. president, i thank the senator and i would just say i hope we get a bipartisan vote on this amendment, this offer, this motion. i hope we get a bipartisan vote to say the one thing we ought to do, if nothing else, is be fair to the american people. you don't pay taxes until the program is up and going. thank you, mr. president. a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oklahoma. mr. coburn: i ask unanimous consent to offer unanimous consent requests to the chairman of the finance committee. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. coburn: i'd offer unanimous consent that before -- that it not be in order for the duration of the consideration of h.r. 3590, to offer an amendment that has not been filed at the desk for 72 hours and for which

there's not been a complete c.b.o. score. the presiding officer: is there objection? a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from montana. mr. baucus: reserve the right to object. -- reserving the right to object. i would like to remind my colleagues, i have sought which -- and have made it a very forthright open process that we've conducted here certainly in the finance committee. i see my colleague on the floor from iowa, totally transparent for months upon months. hearing upon hearing. posted in the finance committee on the internet in advance of consideration. i mean i've never been part of a more transparent process since i've been here, frankly. at least something of this magnitude over this period of time. in fact, one reporter even said to me, senator, is this the new way we do things around here, so transparent, so bipartisan, and so forth. i said, i don't know. i sure like it that way. and -- and -- and also i remind all of us that senator reid's

amendment was made available on november 18th of this year and three days later on the 21st, they voted cloture on motion to proceed. and then 12 days after the reid amendment was made available, we finally began debate on the bill and here we are nearly a month later. so this bill has been out here. now, you mentioned, i note, have in mine that the managers' amendment, which you haven't seen, and, frankly, this senator has not seen either. i have some ideas what's in it, but i have not seen it myself. i think as a practical matter, this will be available for -- for i think 72 hours, as the senator suggests. why do i say that? i say that because it's my expectation that -- it's my expectation that the managers --

that senator reid's managed amendment will be filed very quickly. maybe in a day or two. it is also my expectation that -- if we proceed according to the expectations here, to the defense appropriations conference report, which will be -- then available -- that we'll then be working on for several days an probably the motion -- and probably the motion -- the cloture motion might be filed on the health care bill, i say on the managers' amendment, on the managers' amendment probably not until after we do defense appropriations. during the interim everyone will be able to see at lease for more than 72 hours the contents of the managers' amendment and the health care bill which senator reid's going to be filing. so as a practical matter, i think it's going to happen. now i -- i can't -- mr. coburn: will the senator yield for a question? mr. baucus: i can't agree to a request for 72 hours -- mr. coburn: will the senator

yield for a question? mr. baucus: yes. mr. coburn: one of the reasons that i want this, is it not his belief that the american people get to see this for 72 hours as well and that it ought to be on the internet and everybody in america, if we're going to take one-sixth of our economy, that we ought to have the time to truly read, you know, we're going to have a managers' amendment and that's actually what mine is focused on. mr. baucus: sure. mr. coburn: but to not just read the managers' amendment but to go into the bill -- mr. baucus: i think it's a good idea. i think it's going to happen. mr. coburn: you won't agree to it by unanimous consent -- mr. baucus: i cannot at this time. again, saying, as my expectation is that it will be available for more than 72 hours. mr. coburn: i appreciate the sincerity of the chairman's remarks. mr. baucus: thank you. i object. mr. coburn: mr. president, i have another unanimous consent request. following consent request would be associated with a coburn amendment that would certify that every member of the senate

has read the bill and understands it before they vote on the bill. and the reason i ask the unanimous consent that that amendment be agreed to and accepted is that's exactly what the american people expect us to be doing. and so we -- we don't have a bill right now. we don't know what's going to be in the bill. the chairman has a good idea of what's going to be in the bill. but he doesn't know for sure. only two sets of people, senator reid and his staff and c.b.o. know what's going to be in the bill. i suspect somebody at the white house might. but we ought to -- we ought to take and embrace this idea of transparency and responsibility that the american people can expect every one of us to have read this bill plus the amended bill and -- and certify that we have an understanding for what we're doing to health care in america with this bill. an i'd ask unanimous consent that that be accepted. mr. baucus: mr. president? the presiding officer: is there